Zaldizko - Chapter 10 Arima Trap

My eyes opened to the second sitting room that was behind the library and connected to the main sitting area by a hallway.

“Did something happen?” I whispered in a semi-daze, vaguely recalling my hand thumping something.

I stared at my hand and saw it had stopped bleeding, but some cut wounds were across my knuckles and phalanges.

“Huh, stopped bleeding,” I muttered, absent-mindedly.

I realised my situation. “Colonel, Small Cap!”

_”Silence,”_ Leinard spoke curtly in my mind.

He was standing near the doorway, peering at the dark space beyond.

My eyes widened when I saw Small Cap perched on his shoulder. The spider’s eyes were also staring out at the darkness.

_”I sense strong demonic signatures. Do you sense anything Small Cap?”_ Leinard said telepathically.

Small Cap dropped, lightly, to the floor and flattened his body to the surface.

_”Me feel cold, strong buzz. Very strong. Some breathing like sleeping or waiting. Others moving slow but strong and heavy. One. Two. Maybe three,”_ he answered.

_”Freend awake. Good.”_ Small Cap’s voice perked up when he caught sight of me. He ran up my body and into my belt pouch.

_”How do you know it’s demonic?”_ I asked telepathically.

_”Don’t you feel it? That sickness to your stomach with the taste of fudge to your mouth?”_ Leinard answered.

Now that he had mentioned it, I did have something of a bitter aftertaste that was fudge-like and my stomach was queasy as if I had stepped out of an elevator ride.

Strange that I hadn’t noticed this feeling when I was up against the juxtapositioner demon.

_”You encountered that demon in his lair, so his signature wouldn’t have been released. Demon’s only let off their signature when they’re out on the hunt, like a pheromone,”_ Leinard explained.

_”So where could Death be? What sort of demon are we expecting?”_ I was praying that Death hadn’t been caught by some big six boss type. If he was, I would be useless in rescuing him, considering I had no magical ability whatsoever.

_”A big six boss type,”_ Leinard answered.

I detected a tone of sarcasm. Well, if he found some satisfaction in teasing me, it was compensation for putting all of us into this mess.

_”I’m not sure about your brother. No one was here when we arrived. Speaking of, your hand. It’s healing fast.”_ Leinard gently examined the damage of my hand with an expression of surprise.

_”I’ve always been a fast healer. This will be gone within the hour, although, I might have a scar for a memento,”_ I answered and asked if we could use our voices because this mind-speaking was starting to give me a headache.

“Fine, but no voice louder than whispers. At least for now,” Leinard whispered. “So far we haven’t been noticed.”

_”They notice. Not attack yet. Maybe like me do on a hunt. Me wait; they come.”_ Small Cap added to the conversation.

Leinard nodded his head.

“So, what now?” I whispered.

“We can’t stay here forever. If we’re lucky, the demon has chosen to replicate our world, so we’d have the advantage of knowing the area,” Leinard answered.

Sounds of scratching on glass drew our attention to the gold gilded mirrors on the walls. All the mirror panels were black save one, which had an unlit white church candle standing in the lone candle holder next to it.

“Is this the one that I broke?” I whispered low.

“As I suspect, we’ve been caught in an arima trap.” Leinard sighed.

He showed me in my mind how the trap worked, which was pretty much what I had unintentionally performed when I was calling out to Death.

Every day mirrors could be used as trapping tools to imprison certain demon egos for transportation into Hell’s Labyrinth where the trapped ego would then be released into a container of magically bound lead and iron material, impossible for that ego’s escape.

For an arima trap to work, it required burning wax from a white candle, the blood of the one to trap and the calling of a victim’s name.

The caster spoke the victim’s name to the mirror once to acknowledge its presence, then burned a candle down so it produced hot wax. They mixed the hot wax with the demon’s blood and smeared it on the mirror surface whilst saying the victim’s name a second time to imprison the demon ego. The trap was sealed when the victim’s name was spoken to the mirror a third time.

I was still uncertain of the process, especially when the way we invoked our trap wasn’t according to the described method. My blood was used at that time, and I was hardly the criminal. We also weren’t pulled in until Death’s name was spoken the third time.

Regardless, there had to be a way out. Otherwise, why go to the trouble of transplanting the demon ego into another container for good.

“A good conclusion and right on the money. You do have some smarts about you.” Leinard’s voice intruded on my clever analysis.

“Fresh,” I thought, projecting an image of a smart alec monkey going, _”bleh.”_

“So, do we light this?” I threw Leinard a sideways glance and saw him staring at my damaged hand.

“You’re right, it healed with a slight discolouration for a scar.” He noticed my formerly damaged hand and stroked his chin thoughtfully for the moment before shaking his thought clear.

I frowned when I couldn’t see or hear his thoughts. So, he had a method for shielding his thoughts that bastard.

“You’re ten years too early to invade my inner thoughts Famine.” Leinard smirked.

“Fine.” I huffed. “So light or not light.”

He handed me a salt shaker he had pulled out of his pocket. “A weapon for you. Be mindful of how much you shake out as too much may cause blow-back damage.”

“Huh?! I’m to season a demon?” I scratched my head at how a salt shaker would equate to a nasty demon bomb.

“It’s a precaution. Of course, it won’t work on all demons, but I suspect it would be effective for the ones we’d encounter in here. Just don’t drop it.” He explained and fished through his pocket again to pull out a box of matches.

_”Keep this safe,”_ I thought as I placed the salt shaker in the belt pouch.

_”Yip,”_ Small Cap answered.

I shrugged my shoulders at his odd response and held my breath with both hope and fear when Leinard struck a match to light the candle.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror and called out Trix’s true name.

He pulled out a dagger that was sheathed in a part of his boot, cut his finger and smeared his blood to the mirror.

Dagger sheathed, he then dipped the same finger into the hot wax and mixed it with the smeared blood before it had cooled, calling out Trix’s true name at the same time.

My heart pounded ferociously when I saw the mirror ripple as still water would when a pebble had been cast into it.

Leinard gripped my hand tight when he called out Trix’s true name again.

My heart almost stopped when the mirror’s surface became still, and I saw the room we were in but in the condition of the time before we had been pulled into the trap.

“Trix!” I exhaled his name with hope when I saw his face looking around the mirror.

Leinard placed his hand onto the mirror’s surface, which revealed our presence to the other side.

Trix was saying something but we couldn’t hear his voice and his mouth was moving too fast to make sense of his speech.

War came up behind him and pushed himself into view, ignoring Trix’s frown.

He randomly moved his hands around the air. After a moment, I realised it was with purpose.

_”Will War still see me if I let go of your hand?”_ I thought.

“No,” Leinard answered.

_”Okay, let me fiddle around with your free hand.”_

Leinard looked at me perplexed.

_”Trust me.”_

He sighed and let me do as I liked.

I began to sign language our predicament to War, using the hand Leinard had pressed to the mirror to compensate for the one I couldn’t use. It was a clumsy process but did the trick.

_”War said that they heard the commotion but couldn’t see where we were but heard glass being scratched then saw our faces in the mirror,”_ I updated Leinard in thought.

_”Can you tell him to tell Trix to look up the Arima Trap Release spell in the Light Grimoire?”_ Leinard asked which I signed with my best ability to War who was telling Trix at the same time.

I figured Trix had understood my message because he gave us the thumbs up and left our view.

Wailing and gnashing sounds sent creepy shivers down my back.

I gulped at the sight of hollowed eye ghosts of people with sinister auras, climbing out of the other mirrors to enter the room. Their presence was causing the temperature to drop to freezing.

“Um, Colonel, we have visitors.” My teeth were chattering too much to say words out loud.

The stench of over sweetened fudge balled up my senses and sent my stomach churning with a year’s worth of vomit.

An icy chill numbed the part of my body a ghost’s skeletal hand reached for. I was petrified by the sight of it.

_”Eskatzen dizut!”_ Leinard bellowed at the ghost to vanquish it.

He smashed the mirror to break the reflection, grabbed the candle off the holder and forced my body into a run around the room to dodge the oncoming ghost hoard and their creepy hands.

_”Dezagun argia!”_ He released another spell that caused two balls of white light to appear before us and light the way, front and back, as we escaped the room.

We dodged the ghost attackers through the darkened hallway, past the main sitting area and through the library foyer that was almost obscured in darkness.

I yelped at the icy creeps I felt to my skin every time a ghost hand tried to cop a feel of my body. Their hands would disappear as soon as they reached the light.

Our flight took us through the library door, and through another on one side of the balcony floor.

We sprinted up spiralling stairs and alighted to an open rooftop.

I noticed our destination was for the circular third eye cakra symbol painted on the ground to one corner. It was large enough to smash a whole wall down.

We stopped at the center of the cakra symbol.

I was given an order to stand silent and still. Leinard pocketed the candle then cupped his bleeding hands in a position of prayer and closed his eyes.

_”Close your eyes and don’t open them until I say.”_

I closed my eyes and heard his voice shout out a spell, which I recognised was from the time we escaped the juxtapositioner’s lair.

I gasped when I felt heat stroke my skin and a sensation of silk wrap my body, so I could barely breathe. There was a moment of silence before I felt myself being torn apart and then rebuilt in a matter of seconds.

_”Open your eyes.”_

I blinked in a semi-lit room that had no furniture and was no bigger than a cloakroom.